Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography

Bruce Chilton presents Rabbi Jesus as "the first comprehensive, critical biography of Jesus to date." Though historical Jesus scholars have "demolished the secularist myth that Jesus was a figment of faith," and have begun to describe his ministry in the context of first century Judaism, Chilton (a professor of religion at Bard College and an Episcopal priest) believes they have not gone far enough. He argues that Jesus was "an inspired rabbi with an exclusively Jewish agenda." Thus, "everything Jesus did was as a Jew, for Jews, and about Jews." Rabbi Jesus patiently explores these notions in a straightforward, accessible style, drawing on a wealth of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, and Syriac texts. Many of his arguments are new, and many of them are convincing. Most of them will also make the majority of both Christians and Jews sufficiently uncomfortable as to justify Chilton's striking description of his own work, taken from the book's Foreward: "I sometimes feel as if I am cross-dressing: transgressing basic categories that define who we are [as Christians and as Jews] and how we differentiate ourselves in the world." --Michael Joseph Gross